


sail with me into the dark

by standbygo



Series: November 2014 Song Challenge [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Animal Abuse, Character Study, Psychopathology & Sociopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 05:45:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2640272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbygo/pseuds/standbygo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stepping into Moriarty's head... it's dark in there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sail with me into the dark

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not redistribute my fanfiction on other archives or sites without my express permission. Thank you.
> 
> I've never been so nervous about posting a fic. It's kind of scary hanging out in Jim's head. Please heed the warnings in the tags.
> 
> Another in a series of pieces, built out of a challenge/cooperation between ResidentBunburyist and myself. Each piece begins with a piece of music, then I write a piece and RB draws a picture for it, or RB draws a picture and I write a piece for it. 
> 
> Song prompt: Sail, by AWOL Nation.

_This is how I show my love._

_I made it in my mind because_

_I blame it on my A.D.D. baby._

  * _“Sail” AWOLNation_




 

From as far back as he could remember, Jim had a buzz in his head.

One of his first memories was of getting a big teddy bear for his third birthday. He spent the rest of the party in the corner, hum-buzzing into the bear’s ear. His father finally ripped it out of his arms. He didn’t cry, just went silent again, staring at his father.

He somehow knew that it wasn’t a problem with his ears. It was further up and further in. He never complained of it. It was nice, the buzzing. He knew it was in his own brain, because he could turn it up and down if he wanted. When Mother was singing, he turned it up to drown out her voice. When Mother and Father fought, he turned it down so he could hear them better. Especially when Mother screamed. Especially then.

The sound was a part of him. It ran through his body like ground glass in his veins, pumping into every cell in his body – skin, blood, liver, lungs. Everywhere. He hugged it into himself at night.

Everyone else was so ordinary. Irritants. Gnats that persisted in flying into his face, to be tolerated or smacked away.

When he was seven, the neighbour’s cat wandered into their back yard. It bumped its head on his leg, mewing. He lifted his foot and pressed it onto the cat’s back, listening to it yowl, listening to the tiny snap of its bones. When it stopped crying, suddenly, like a door had been shut, Jim realized that the buzz had stopped.

He tilted his head, fascinated at the silence. It surrounded him like a warm blanket. For those few seconds, he swam in it. Then it came back, gradually, like turning up the stereo. He smiled, and buried the cat before Mother saw. He told the neighbour he had seen a dog carry the cat away.

When he was ten, he killed the dog with a loop of wire around its neck. “Everything’s going to be all right, good boy, good boy,” he chanted as the dog whined and kicked. The buzz went away for a whole hour. He threw the dog’s body into a skip.

When he was thirteen, he mixed some rat poison into some mince and gave it to another neighbour’s Alsatian. He watched it foam and twitch to stillness. During the two hours of silence, he left the dog on the neighbour’s back doorstep.

When he was fifteen, Carl Powers laughed at him at school, called him ‘weird’. Jim by now had figured out how to break into the school’s chemistry lab at night and make whatever he wanted. He slipped it into Carl’s cream, sat in the bleachers during the swim meet, and watched Carl slip under the water, watched the children and adults panic and try to save him. He slipped out of the building and wandered around London in his silence, smiling at everyone he passed.

When he was seventeen, he left home. He didn’t need them anymore.

He started small, organizing thefts, frauds. At first no one took him seriously, then they did. The first time he got more than a thousand pounds from his work, he spent it all on a single suit. He budgeted himself, no more than one suit a month, until his earnings were great enough and he could buy one whenever he wanted.

He could snap his fingers and people died. The power was heady, addictive, sexual. He didn’t dirty his hands any more, or wrinkle his pretty, pretty clothes. He had pets of his own to do that for him.

Then one of his pets got arrested, and the papers said it was a consulting detective that figured it out. Jim laughed when he first heard about it. So silly. Then another pet was arrested, and Jim didn’t laugh any more. He found the man’s website and read it for hours and hours. He thought about his foot, the wire, the poison; but there was something about this Sherlock Holmes, with his preposterous name and his hat and his coat. Jim wanted the coat. If anyone had asked, he wanted Sherlock, to wear him as a coat, but no one asked.

Jim hid in the shadow of the railway storage house, after the Sherlock’s pet saw the cyphers and ran away shouting for Sherlock. He hid carefully, but didn’t want to get the fresh paint on his suit. Sherlock came back with the little soldier, and Jim watched them dance together. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from the sight of him, turning and turning, holding his soldier-pet by the face. Jim suddenly realized the buzzing had stopped, and he only heard Bach in his head.

He set up a beautiful game for Sherlock, a present, a love poem covered with semtex. He sang to Sherlock through his little sock puppets, crooning to him.

_Sail with me. Into the dark. Sail._

He took Sherlock’s pet for his last and loveliest puppet. He put the semtex on him himself, feasting on the anger that radiated from the soldier. “Everything’s going to be all right, good boy, good boy,” he whispered into the silence. All he could hear was Sherlock’s pet’s breath, and the waves in the pool.

He took his place backstage, waited for the curtains to part.

 

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> I first heard this song when I came across this terrific fanvid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tderL0tZ2jo&index=13&list=PL5qf7zxCk2JA5hlSIzMF5uGMRQiWqjm8c
> 
> "Further up and further in" is a phrase from CS Lewis's The Last Battle.


End file.
